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No heads roll at Fox News over Sean Hannity tea party incident

April 23, 2010 | 2:50
pm

After Fox News’ last-minute recall of Sean Hannity from a tea party event in Cincinnati last week, the network vowed to do a thorough post-mortem to determine how the host ended up being listed as the headliner of a political rally that participants were being charged to attend. But now the embarrassing incident appears to have been quietly put to bed without any action. As New York Magazine first reported Thursday, executives have not assessed who should be held responsible for Hannity’s top billing at the Tax Day event at the University of Cincinnati. While there have been post-mortem discussions about the incident, it does not appear that they have resulted in any serious disciplinary measures taken against any staffers involved.

The lack of action is surprising, given the uncharacteristically public critique of the situation Fox News executives made at the time. After learning from “Hannity” executive producer John Finley that people attending the rally were being charged to attend -- with the seats near the stage where Hannity was to tape his show going for an extra premium -- top network officials recalled the host to New York and made it clear that they were furious.

“Fox News never agreed to allow the Cincinnati Tea Party organizers to use Sean Hannity’s television program to profit from broadcasting his show from the event,” Bill Shine, the network’s executive vice president of programming, said at the time.

On Friday, a network spokeswoman would only reiterate a statement given to New York Magazine, which said: “We’re not going to discuss internal matters any further.”